Taking from his clothing a small red-leather
pocket-book one half of which was leaved for mem-
oranda, he discovered that he was without a pencil.
He broke a twig from a bush, dipped it into a pool
of blood and wrote rapidly. He had hardly touched
the paper with the point of his twig when a low, wild
peal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance
away, and growing ever louder, seemed approach-
ing ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous
laugh, like that of the loon, solitary by the lake-
side at midnight; a laugh which culminated in an
unearthly shout close at hand, then died away
by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that
uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the
world whence it had come. But the man felt that
this was not so--that it was near by and had not
moved.
A strange sensation began slowly to take posses-
sion of his body and his mind. He could not have
said which, if any, of his senses was affected; he felt
it rather as a consciousness--a mysterious mental
assurance of some overpowering presence--some
supernatural malevolence different in kind from
the invisible existences that swarmed about him, and
superior to them in power. He knew that it had
uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be
approaching him; from what direction he did not
know--dared not conjecture. All his former fears
were forgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that
now held him in thrall.
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